


The Real Monsters

by sylph_feather



Series: Monsters and Men [1]
Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: AU but still largely follows the story, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Monster, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, I might do a follow up if y'all want, Implied Sexual Content, also JD is not healthy-shipped with Veronica this is very bad and it gets shown don't you worry, barely tho - Freeform, changeling!veronica, cursing, demon!JD, everyone else is just mentioned BUT THERE!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 05:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13920096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylph_feather/pseuds/sylph_feather
Summary: J.D. wants revenge on both humans and fae for ostracizing both of them.Veronica just wants a happy life with her secret kept safe.





	The Real Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> what on earth inspired this? not sure tbh. enjoy

Heather wraps her arm around Veronica’s throat, and hisses, “I raised you up from nothing. You can’t just  _ leave _ .” 

Veronica wants to let her know that she doesn’t feel good, or maybe say something snide about who the real monster is here, but when she opens up her mouth all that comes out is bile. Heather screeches, and all of it is garbled by the alcohol.

_ Maybe I drank too much _ , Veronica thinks wearily as Heather grabs her face and the first words become clear-- “I’ll ruin you. Nobody will ever want to talk with you, everyone will--” and everything goes silent. 

This time, Veronica knows it’s not because the copious drinking; Heather’s mouth is slack jawed, and not moving. Slowly, it twists into a wicked grin. 

“Looking a little blue in the face, Ronnie,” she says snidely. Slowly, she peels a ring off her finger, and shoves it directly against Veronica’s skin. 

Muggy, she barely processes the gap between the emptiness and its burning contact. 

“It’s iron,” Heather declares, as if Veronica can’t tell from that familiar seething. “Got it to expose fae. I never suspected  _ you _ ,” she drawls, pinching a scale that has formed underneath the ring, releasing Veronica from its terrible pain. 

All Veronica can do is fall forward, kneeling next to her puke and chant  _ no-no-no _ . 

“I’ll expose you to the whole school on Monday,” Heather chimes happily, and skips away to party, leaving Veronica to rake through her hair with nails too long to be human anymore, disguise flaking apart. 

 

\-- 

 

To be an exposed fae was to be a socially mutilated fae. 

Oh yes, there were  _ rules _ about all this-- no killing or injuring them, they’re our equals, etcetera etcetera… But rules they were just squeaky clean ideals. Humans rejected monsters more so than they rejected their own-- which really was saying something, considering the treatment Veronica had observed of Martha. 

Granted, the fae weren’t much better. They were very… classist. Many went off into their own little permanently peaceful realm and just existed doing their magic peaceful fairy bullshit for eternities. Not a very exciting way to live in Veronica’s opinion, so she didn’t mind as much whenever the fae decided anyone who didn’t fit their high standards shouldn’t exist, and booted them to garbage sectors or even the human realm. (Well, maybe it stung a little.)

Humans and the fae were both monsters in their own right, and perhaps more similar in all the most horrible ways, and neither would admit it in a thousand years. 

 

\-- 

 

After the disaster of the party, Veronica knows how she wants to spend her last human hours, before everything changes. Before she can get caught up in the panic of _ oh God, my parents will find out, and Martha will--  _  he saves her. 

J.D. is intoxicating, and part of him smells like magic, too-- of ashes and smoke. She chokes on it and lets it invade her. 

 

\-- 

 

They kill Heather. 

It was an accident-- at least, on Veronica’s part. She doesn’t quite realize yet that it was not all accidental on Jason’s part. 

The pair scramble; to be caught by the cops would be a terrible thing, she has her whole bright future ahead of her. 

To go to prison as a fae, too… she shudders to imagine the iron shackles burning into her limbs as she crafts the faux note. 

J.D. smells more like smoke than ever, and she can almost see his trenchcoat flickering a bit, imaterial. Veronica blinks away, knowing she’s stressed and not thinking properly, and doesn’t look up to meet his eerie smile. 

 

\--

 

Oh yes, she feels  _ bad _ about killing Heather, no doubt about it. Her ghost flickers by in the corner of her eye and she wishes she was just a human without the ability to see spirits. Veronica is comforted by the fact that Heather, whether she likes it or not, will be forced to move on to the afterlife soon enough. 

That doesn’t make her feel any less guilty when Heather appears, spitting blue drain cleaner to spite her. She was a bitch, but she didn’t deserve  _ death _ . 

The fact that Veronica takes comfort in the fact that she was not exposed because of that death makes her feel like she has iron in her gut when the spirit appears. 

 

\-- 

 

When she’s with J.D, his comfort drowns out the guilt in her belly as they caress. 

Slowly, things come to the surface.

“I’m a changeling,” she admits, slowly sipping a blue slushy as he nurses his red one. 

The straw falls out of his mouth, and it’s as though it was a stopper retaining his questions. They come pouring out. 

She does her best to explain, explain how she didn’t know for a long while, how suffocating the fear of being found out was, how even her own  _ family _ still didn’t know, how fake she felt, how much it had hurt when the fairies had shunned and scorned her when she had approached their doors, how she hadn’t become her true form in years out of fear, and how scared she was. 

He held her in his arms, and his chest felt warm and his coat flickered, transparent at the edges.

 

\--

 

She never thought there would be a  _ next _ but here they are. 

“What the fuck have you done?” she sobs, two dead boys at her feet and tacky blood on her hands. “You said it would only  _ look _ like they died, that Ich Luge was an enchantment, that--” she cut herself off. All  _ lies _ . 

“I worship you. They made you cry, and now they can’t anymore, can they?”

He strides up to her, wraps his arms around her neck in a chokehold that is but a shadow of his tender hugs. His eyes glow a deadly red and Veronica holds her mistakes in her hands feebly.

“Our love is God,” he whispers, and terrified, she repeats it. 

 

\--

 

“They were only seventeen,” she says, cradling her legs in her arms, refusing to seek that comfort from J.D. All of her thoughts come pouring out at once,  _ yes, we’re damaged but that doesn’t make us right, please, J.D. if you want to be with me, you have to STOP-- _

He agrees, smoky and clutching on to her. 

 

\--

 

She’s still terrified of him, can still smell the kill on him, but she knows that he wouldn’t, right? He wouldn’t. Veronica is just being paranoid.

Heather just laughs from the side lines, clutching onto a nervous Kurt and Ram. She ignores the feeling that she was the one who got shot in the gut, instead turning her attention to J.D. 

“How did you… get to be what you are?” she asks carefully. Neither of his parents seem to be fae, from his sad tale. 

“Well, you know how mom died,” he says unnecessarily, but she nods anyways. “I ran in after her. Was half dead--” he’s cut off by his own chuckle, and Veronica does her best to remain still as his hand drifts to her cheek. “Thank goodness for dad’s knowledge of necromancy and summoning,” he says like he’s telling a bad joke. His hand dissolves into smoke. 

 

\--

 

Days and days and days pile, and Veronica wonders if her paranoia has a grain of truth, watching the fire in J.D.’s eyes burn ever brighter. 

 

\-- 

 

When she saves McNamara and J.D. is pissed,  _ another dead Heather is a good one _ , she knows. 

She still doesn’t know what to do, though. She tries to rekindle her love, but all that’s there is a drowning fear, the kind that makes her want to stretch her long unused wings and fly so far away.

Veronica tries to repair the damaged boy anyways. 

 

\--

 

“We’re better than them, Veronica. The fae, the humans, all of them. We’re gods,” he hisses into the door. 

All Veronica can think of is Martha, and God, she’ll  _ never _ be better than Martha, she drove her to try to commit  _ suicide. _ She is not perfect, not because she is fae or even because she is partially human in a way, but rather because she is damaged, because she is alive. No creature should decide the lives of others in such a way that her and J.D. have done, punishing as they see fit. 

Nobody here deserves to die except for her, and even as she makes a noose she knows that it will have to wait.

 

\-- 

 

Veronica holds deathly still, praying J.D. will not check her breath, praying he does not check the noose. He accepts it. 

_ Please, I can’t do this alone… _

_ BUT I WILL IF I MUST. _

And with that, he whisks himself out of the room, looking more like smoke than a breathing creature. His feet don’t touch the earth. 

 

\-- 

 

Her mom comes in as Veronica is letting herself down, and screeches. 

Were she human, perhaps she could play it off as  _ it’s just a joke mom, just a terrible, terrible joke _ . 

She has no time. 

Instead, she does that which she has not done in a long time, feeling her skin become hard and scaly, letting her wings tear through her blouse. 

Veronica launches herself out the window like a cat, feebly beating her wet, weak wings. Galloping on, she hopes they dry fast. 

 

\-- 

 

To say she makes an entrance is an understatement; it’s not everyday a gleaming blue drake rips the hinges off the high school doors. 

She gallops right past two sobbing girls of yellow and pink. 

In that instant, Veronica has never wanted to stop and curl around someone to comfort them more, even with J.D. 

She has no time, and  leaves Martha and McNamara behind. Comfort will be useless if all crumbles to ash. 

 

\--

 

Veronica knows her senses are above average humans when in her ordinary human form, but she didn’t expect them to grow this much. She sniffs out the familiar scent of ash and finds J.D. under the gym, in the boiler room, clutching a pulsing red talisman. 

“Put it down,” she snarls, steam erupting from her mouth. 

J.D. seems surprised and happy almost, at first. It quickly blows away, replaced in turn by hatred and twisted joy. 

“This little thing? Ah, that won’t help. This just triggers the talismans I’ve planted upstairs,” he smiles serenely. “You know, you’re quite beautiful,” J.D. hums, hand alight and barely-there, reaching to touch her snout. She snaps, and everything goes downhill as J.D. bursts into a fog. 

Red eyes leer as Veronica claws at her plated neck, choking on him.

“You know, we’d never get along with them. They’re all assholes. The fae, the humans, all of them. They all deserve this, Veronica-- for what they’ve done to you, for what they’ve done to me. They’ll look at these ashes and they’ll see. They’ll learn,” hisses a voice that comes from everywhere. 

Veronica lashes out, writhing like she’s possessed, nearly dead from lack of oxygen. 

Her spiked tail strikes flesh, and she feels her many spikes penetrate his core. 

She has no time to think, no time to be in anguish. She clutches the talisman in her mouth, and ploughs directly through the wall of the boiler room, making a mad dash to the sky. 

 

\--

 

Flying is freedom. 

Veronica forgot how much she missed it. 

She lets memories overtake her-- of how, when she was ten, she was uncomfortable in her own skin, and would escape in the cool evenings into the sky, holding the moonlight in her talons. 

(When she was eleven, one of her neighbour’s children was revealed to be a changeling. His parents threw him out, and hers expressed their disgust. She stopped flying.)

(Did anyone stop to consider that they were kids, too? It was their parents that stole the other child away, not them--)

The talisman pulses angrily in her jaw.

 

\--

 

J.D. floats, smoky and uncertain in his footing on a cloud of smoke, before taking the bomb from her.

Veronica cannot tear her sapphire eyes away as he clouds himself around the bomb. 

“ _ Say hi to God.” _

 

\--

 

She falls lightly on wings, ash that once was J.D. falling with her and coating her scales. It feels religious, holy. 

A new life. A new start. 

Like a phoenix. 

_ You’re getting your myths mixed up _ , she jokes weakly to herself. 

 

\-- 

 

“There’s a new sheriff in town, she hisses. Everyone seems too terrified to object as she crushes the red scrunchy in her claws.

 

\--

 

Martha and Heather McNamara accept her. She’s unsure why she ever doubted in them; for all that mankind could be cruel, there were many gems among them. Perhaps the same could be said for any and all creatures. 

Under her wings, they watch the Princess Bride. 

**Author's Note:**

> do you guys wanna follow up? I might do more, if you like it! Also, I'd love some prompts relating to this. Drop 'em in the comments if you have 'em!


End file.
